Government Barred From Ending Family Parole Program for Now (1)

The Trump administration can’t immediately terminate family reunification parole programs that allowed thousands of family members of citizens or green-card holders seeking permanent status to stay in the US.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal officials acted in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner, Judge Indira Talwani of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts said as she granted a request for preliminary injunction in an order entered Sunday.

The ruling stops the termination of family reunification parole processes for Colombians, Cubans, Ecuadorians, Guatemalans, Haitians, Hondurans, and Salvadorans whose work authorizations had been issued while they were noncitizens. The extension comes two weeks after Talwani granted a request for a temporary restraining order against the administration.

The federal notice issued last Dec. 15 said all parolees “without a lawful basis to remain in the United States” following the termination of their parole must leave the country before their parole termination date.

The notice added that DHS “generally intends to promptly remove aliens” who entered the US under the family reunification parole programs and who stay in the country beyond their parole termination date.

Though the government argues the migrants weren’t vetted sufficiently and pose a security risk, the parolees say DHS failed to consider the move’s human impacts, especially given that more than a quarter of them are children.

The parolees argued that the termination of parole granted under the programs exceeded Noem’s statutory authority. But it was sufficient that she determined that family reunification no longer warranted the parolees’ presence in the US, Talwani said.

But the parolees did establish a strong likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that Noem’s actions were arbitrary and capricious, Talwani said. Noem improperly understated the reliance interests of the parolees—including that terminating parole would produce family separation—while she overstated “countervailing concerns” over “insufficient vetting and fraud” where the concerns were “unsupported,” Talwani said.

Vetting and fraud concerns were unsupported by the factual record and, as introduced in its program ternination notice, “not relevant to the Secretary’s decision to terminate grants of parole,” the judge said.

The parolees have a high likelihood of success on showing that the government defendants didn’t provide the the parolees with written notice of the termination, as required by regulation, she said.

Plaintiffs also are likely to prevail on their claim that the government’s failure to provide written notice of the terminations violated the parolees’ due process rights, Talwani said, because they weren’t minimally informed.

Numerous reports of the economic hardships and gang threats the parolees faced if forced to return to their native countries made it clear they also faced “irreparable injury,” the judge said.

Justice Action Center, Human Rights First, Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, and Justin B. Cox of Hood River, Oregon represent the plaintiffs.

The case is Doe v. Noem, D. Mass., No. 1:25-cv-10495, entered 1/25/26.